Daily Archives: September 30, 2010

As eurozone leaders cheered Ireland’s attempts to bring its crisis under control, banks across the 16-country region provided a separate display of reviving financial market confidence. The European Central Bank reported it had rolled over much less than expected of €225bn in three-to-12 month loans to banks that expired on Thursday.

The news was a boost for the ECB, marking a significantly reduced reliance on the unlimited liquidity it has been pumping into the banking system since the collapse two years ago of Lehman Brothers investment bank. Read more

On Monday, the IMF cannot contain its enthusiasm the UK’s harsh austerity plans. On Thursday it releases research warning fiscal consolidation “will hurt” and “are likely to be more painful if they occur simultaneously across many countries, and if monetary policy is not in a position to offset them”.

The IMF finds that, “fiscal consolidation equal to 1 percent of GDP typically reduces real GDP by about 0.5 percent after two years”. Does the IMF left hand talk to its right hand?

Sadly for journalists, the answer is “yes”. Both IMF documents hype-up their conclusions to give the appearance of deep contradiction. They are, in fact, consistent.

Robust growth, rising global prices and expanding credit have prompted Taiwan’s central bank to increase its key rates by 12.5bp. The move, effective Friday, takes the discount rate to 1.5 per cent, 50bp above its record low and equal to its 2003-4 low (see chart).

Easy credit has fuelled real estate and land speculation, which is clearly troubling the Bank: five of the 11 paragraphs are dedicated to the subject. Interest rates are only part of the Bank’s toolkit: several “targeted prudential measures introduced by the CBC are an integral part of the efforts to enhance risk management for real estate loans.”

The general reaction to Adam Posen’s speech on Tuesday has been to predict a 1-7-1 vote at next week’s Monetary Policy Committee with Mr Posen voting for a resumption in quantitative easing and Andrew Sentance voting for higher interest rates. I have no idea how the MPC will vote. But I do know that Mr Posen is not necessarily alone on the Committee in his central view that if demand is too weak, the risk is not just a temporary double dip but a persistent loss of output which can blight lives and an entire economy.

“I think if anything we’re more uncertain about how much spare capacity there is. It’s an extraordinarily difficult judgement to make, and I think the Committee – we had a long discussion of this – we were more inclined to think that this is a reduction in effective supply in the short run that could be reversed. So I don’t think we are confident that this reduction in supply capacity will necessarily persist. And indeed we are in a position where, if growth in demand were to be rapid, I suspect that much of the capacity which has been, quote, “lost”, would come back and be able to be used again, whether in the labour market or on capital stock.

Paradoxically, given its obsession with the subject, eurozone inflation looks the least of the European Central Bank’s worries at the moment. September’s annual inflation rate was 1.8 per cent (up from 1.6 per cent in August) according to Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical unit. That was exactly within the ECB’s goal of an annual rate “below but close” to 2 per cent. Energy and food prices probably accounted for the latest increase.

Although prices are generally considered “stickier” in the eurozone than in the US or UK, the region’s inflation rate is not often so on-target, even if the average since the euro was launched in 1999 is also more-or-less spot on (as Jean-Claude Trichet, ECB president, does not tire of reminding audiences).

The latest figure will further convince the ECB that it not need worry at this stage about deflation, Read more

As expected, Moody’s has downgraded Spain, three months after placing the sovereign on downgrade watch. Fitch and S&P downgraded Spain’s debt in late Spring, and S&P still rates Spanish debt below its peers.

Spanish debt is still rated above the rest of the PIIGS by Moody’s. PIIGS sovereign debt runs from Ba1 for Greece to Aa1 for Spain. Moody’s order runs: Greece, Portugal, Italy = Ireland, Spain. Fitch and S&P rate PIIGS’ sovereign debt in the same rough order, though at different levels. Click on the graphic to play with our interactive sovereign ratings graphic.

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Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS

Claire Jones is the FT's Eurozone economy correspondent, based in Frankfurt. Prior to this, she was an economics reporter in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS

Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS

Sarah O’Connor is the FT’s economics correspondent in London. Before that, she was a Lex writer, covered the US economy from Washington and the Icelandic banking collapse from Reykjavik. Sarah studied Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University and joined the FT in 2007. RSS

Ferdinando Giugliano is the FT's global economy news editor, based in London. Ferdinando holds a doctorate in economics from Oxford University, where he was also a lecturer, and has worked as a consultant for the Bank of Italy, the Economist Intelligence Unit and Oxera. He joined the FT in 2011 as a leader writer. RSS

Emily Cadman is an economics reporter at the FT, based in London. Prior to this, she worked as a data journalist and was head of interactive news at the Financial Times. She joined the FT in 2010, after working as a web editor at a variety of news organisations.
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Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS

Ben McLannahan covers markets and economics for the FT from Tokyo, and before that he wrote Lex notes from London and Hong Kong. He studied English at Cambridge University and joined the FT in 2007, after stints at the Economist Group and Institutional Investor. RSS